Restoring objects to their former appereance, How to restore an oldobject

I think I haven't seen any topic on restoring an object to it's former "glory". I've opened this topic for all the members who wanna share with us the "recipies" on how to restore battlefield relics, old objects, etc to their initial appereance. I hope it will be a useful topic for all of us.

While I was in the country side my grandma had an old bras object which she claimed to have cleaned with vinegar (otet) and ash (cenusha). I knew that if a copper or bras object comes in contact with vinegar that object will start to darken itself until it's black but after I tried vinegar+ashes on a brass surface I noticed that that "potion" realy works and it really does clean bras. I think it works on copper to...I haven't tryed it yet but I think it'll work.

To clean silver I used with somewhat good results sodium bicarbonate (bicarbonat de sodiu in romanian....I hope I guessed the english name for it). Since silver is a very resistant metal the only thing that can react with it is sulphure (sulf).



This post has been edited by ^All^ on September 19, 2007 11:24 pm

Vinegar is an acid and together with ash that is abrasive will clean the brass you could also try feruginol and steel wool.

Plus that, it contains ,if i remember well, "oxid de carbon" . it can be found in toothpastes too.
Edit: The best way to clean silver oxide is by pulling some sodium bicarbonate or baking soda on the oxidated spot and put some drops of vinegar over them.

This post has been edited by Messerschmitt on September 20, 2007 11:01 am

I read in a newspaper a few years ago that a private collector that has a nice pistol collection cleaned all his guns by puting them in kerosene (I think this is the word for the romanian "petrol"-the liquid that was used for lamps, stoves, etc) and letting them in there for some days and after that the rust will clean out nicely. I neve tryed it, but it might work.

P.S. I think it works only on iron and steel objects.



This post has been edited by ^All^ on September 21, 2007 01:39 am